alk with the English lad. He's seen your son many a time--only
to think on't!"

Dame Brinker took up the thread of the discourse.

"You'll pick out the lad quick enough, mynheer, because he's in company
with Peter van Holp, and his hair curls up over his forehead like
foreign folk's, and if you hear him speak, he talks of big and fast,
only it's English, but that wouldn't be any hindrance to your honor."

The doctor had already lifted his hat to go. With a beaming face he
muttered something about its being just like the young scamp to give
himself a rascally English name, called Hans "my son," thereby making
that young gentleman as happy as a lord, and left the cottage with very
little ceremony, considering what a great meester he was.

The grumbling coachman comforted himself by speaking his mind as he
drove back to Amsterdam. Since the doctor was safely stowed away in
the coach and could not hear a word, it was a fine time to say terrible
things of folks who hadn't no manner of feeling for nobody, and who were
always wanting the horses a dozen times of a night.

Mysterious Disappearance of Thomas Higgs

Higgs's factory was a mine of delight for the gossips of Birmingham. It
was a small building but quite large enough to hold a mystery. Who the
proprietor was, or where he came from none could tell. He looked like a
gentleman, that was certain, though everybody knew he had risen from an
apprenticeship, and he could handle his pen like a writing master.

Years ago he had suddenly appeared in the place a lad of eighteen,
learned his trade faithfully, and risen in the confidence of his
employer, been taken in as a partner soon after the time was up.
Finally, when old Willett died, had assumed the business on his own
hands. This was all that was known of his affairs.

It was a common remark among some of the good people that he never had
a word to say to a Christian soul, while others declared that though
he spoke beautifully when he chose to, there was something wrong in
his accent. A tidy man, too, they called him, all but for having that
scandalous green pond alongside of his factory, which wasn't deep enough
for an eel and was "just a fever nest, as sure as you live."

His nationality was a great puzzle. The English name spoke plain enough
for ONE side of his house, but of what manner of nation was his mother?
If she'd been an American, he'd certainly have had high cheekbones and
reddish skin; if a